In a world with lots of surprises, both good and bad, one must always stand tall for what they believe in.

Monday, April 2, 2007

Our Easter Weekend

This weekend we celebrated Easter because I have to work next weekend. We had my sister Pam, her husband Tom, and their three kids, Emily, Matthew, and Jillian, as well as Ryan's Mom and Dad and his Uncle Paul for the weekend.

Our weekend started off with a visit from The Easter Bunny. On Friday night, he came hopping by as we were grilling up our steaks. He had heard that Emily, Matthew and Jillian were going to be at our house for the weekend to celebrate Easter and he wanted to see if they had arrived yet and if they were behaving well. I told him to come back on Saturday and see what he thought for himself. Well, he must have been happy because the Easter Bunny arrived on Saturday night and brought them all kinds of goodies.

The kids arrived on Friday night. I wish I had taken a picture of Matthew's shoes at the entrance to our home. His shoes looked like they had flown off his feet, one in each direction, as they ran into our home in excitement of the weekend. It was so great to see them, so excited and happy to be here. It didn't take long for them to head downstairs and start playing games with Uncle Ryan. I went down at one time and Ryan was playing mini stick hockey with Matthew and a board game with Emily, all at the same time. Talk about multi tasking.

We woke up early Saturday morning with anticipation for our day ahead of us, as we were going to an Easter egg hunt that day. We boiled eggs and decorated them in the morning which was a lot of fun. Around 11 am, Ryan's family arrived and shortly there after we walked over to the elementary school for the Egg Hunt. The egg hunt was pretty fun as they searched and collected their eggs.

We then got ready for the Easter Feast. I wanted to make the Easter meal as healthy as possible because of my dieters, Mike and Ryan. So this years menu included: Spiral Ham, Scalped Potatoes, Herbed Carrots, Almond and Herb Coated Green Beans, Tossed Salad with Cranberries and Walnuts and dinner rolls. I think it was a pretty good selection and it tasted good as well. For dessert, I had those little individual dessert angel food cups with strawberries and a Apple Pie that was made by Emily's Choir as a fund raiser. Yum-O.

About 11 pm on Saturday night, Ryan was just about to call it a night when Uncle Paul said to Ryan, "Hey you've got a leak here!" Well, it wasn't no leak rather our 1st floor toilet overflowing!! OH yeah! Big time fun and big time mess. It must have been overflowing for about 5 minutes as there was water in the back hall and the worst of it, water running down into the basement! What a mess!

Last night, after everyone had left I missed them all so much. You go from a house full of people, where you feel like you are being pulled in every direction to just a house of two in a matter of seconds. My sister and I are best friends and I love having her around to spend time with. I am glad that we live close enough that we can see each other easily. But I am sad that we aren't closer so we can't go out and go for lunch or go shopping, or just hang out at each other's homes. I feel the same way about both of my mothers. It was nice to see my mother in law and have some time together yesterday.

The kids add another element in your life.Emily is the oldest of the three and she holds a special place in both Ryan and mine's heart. I think we expect a lot from her because she was the only child for so long and is a very intelligent girl. She gets very excited when there is new people around to "entertain for" and sometimes needs to be reminded to settle down. Both Ryan and I felt bad for having to "be on" Emily's case this weekend, but we just expected her to act more her age. We would have enjoyed spending more time with her playing games, and having fun instead of telling her what not to do, but I guess that is what being a kid is like sometimes.Matthew is a very cute boy. He makes me laugh with his funny sayings and his comical acts.As for Jillian, it was nice to have the baby in the house this weekend. To have a baby cuddle against you and fall asleep is very comforting and unlike no other feeling in the world.

Ryan and I are very lucky to have such wonderful nieces and nephew. We love them very much and enjoy their visits very much, and we both miss them already.